Benjamin Butler

"The true touchstone of civil liberty is not that all men are equal but that every man has the right to be the equal of every other man – if he can."

"I was always a friend of Southern rights, but an enemy of Southern wrongs."

"I have forborne, sir, in this discussion, to argue the question upon any other or different grounds of right than those adopted by your authorities, in claiming the negroes as property, because I understand that your fabric of opposition to the Government of the United States has the right of property in man as its corner-stone."

"Will you suffer your soldier, captured in fighting your battles, to be in confinement for months rather than release him by giving for him that which you call a piece of property, and which we are willing to accept as a man? You certainly appear to place less value upon your soldier than you do upon your negro. I assure you, much as we of the North are accused of loving property, our citizens would have no difficulty in yielding up any piece of property they have in exchange for one of their brothers or sons languishing in your prisons."

"Let the colored people maintain their rights as citizens with dignity [and] forbearance, under the wrongs which will be put upon them by prejudice and ignorance. Let them show by industry and frugality and obedience to the laws that they are worthy of those rights, and I am sure, as the sun shines on the just and the unjust, they shall attain every right which belongs to the citizens of the United States."

"That sturdy old Roman, Benjamin Butler, made the negro a contraband, Abraham Lincoln made him a freeman, and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant made him citizen."

"The great crisis facing the country was the rebellion and anybody in the North who wanted to preserve the Union now found the principal enemy to be those Southern slave owners who had broken up the country. The institution which sustained them and the institution they went to war to defend was slavery. And more and more northerners became convinced of that. As a consequence, a lot of them went the whole way over, from being conservative, pro-Southern, pro-slavery Democrats to becoming radical Republicans. Benjamin Butler is a good example, and Edwin M. Stanton is another one."